Total Immersion Level 3 Week 6 - Feeling Swimming

Feeling Swimming

We've spent a lot of time with our House of Cards, doing great drills and plenty of time with work on form for swimming. This week, after our dry land work where we focused on the subtle details of our shoulder articulation and forearm placement during recovery, Shane had us start to work more on refining our body tipping point.

To have a really well refined "tipping point" for a most efficient weight shift we need to have a lot of factors align including;

• Optimal Poise Point
• Leverage for our grip
• Muscles must be relaxed
• Proper head, neck and spine alignment
• Patient Lead Arm

Whew! He helped us do this by having us work on dropping to a deeper target. This shortened our stroke, but helped us to feel what a proper tipping point would be. We also worked with lunging our lat muscle as we extend. His main point here was to remind us that our goal is to use gravity first and then add our body's force.

I did enjoy the deeper target and could feel myself tipping more. It was nice to just work on feeling swimming happening, thus spending a little less time thinking about every piece.

Flip Turns

One of the things we had talked about learning in Level 3 was how to properly do a flip turn. About halfway through class, Shane inquired, "so who wants to learn how to do a flip turn?" We all looked at him and DiDi and I looked panicked. He smiled and said, "yes?" I blurted out, "Anne is sick and she really wants to learn flip turns." DiDi echoed with, "it is really important to her." We decided to have flip turns wait until week 7.

Eyes CLOSED

Shane wanted us to focus on really feeling swimming. To this end, he asked us to close our eyes in the water while we focused on delicately slipping one arm forward in the water. He wanted us to feel the water moving along our entire arm and keep our forearm "hidden" as it extends through the sleeve.

This was fun. It changed the focus and made things feel a little easier. My forearm is not in the correct form, and I don't think that this improved anything about that, but I did find that with my eyes shut I was less worried about things and more zen in the water. I tried hard to feel that water moving along my arm like Shane wanted us to.

Double Fin Swim

We've been doing Yin/Yang drills for many weeks now. When they first started, I didn't even know if I could do it! Now, they've become something that I look forward to. Tonight Shane asked us to try this drill with a fin on each foot. Immediately, I could feel my kick settle out. I was still breaking the surface for the first few times, but each time the kick felt a little longer with less leg flection. The fins greatest asset? Helping me feel the pressure on my foot that is sometimes just too subtle for me to recognize in normal swimming.

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